Keeping Score
As I trawl through all my notes and research around trauma and the body, i came across an old piece I wrote back in the dark days of 2020, but it still feels as relevant today as it did then.
Keeping Score: the body just knows
There is a phenomenal book written by Dr Bessel van der Kolk, psychiatrist and founder of the Trauma Research Foundation, called The Body Keeps the Score. This book has had a profound impact on me, both personally and professionally.
I’ve yet to meet an engaged and informed counsellor, bodywork practitioner, yoga teacher, or similar who hasn’t read it and come away inspired. Most have gained knowledge that sparks a beautiful butterfly effect, improving their practice and deepening their own sense of self.
Understanding Trauma
In his seminal work, van der Kolk shares insights from decades of experience on the impact and transmissibility of trauma. This applies not only to the person living with trauma, sometimes merely surviving, but also to those connected to them, whether directly or across generations. Trauma ripples out in complex, insidious ways.
Van der Kolk emphasises that integrated approaches to understanding and holding trauma are the most sensitive and effective. These approaches place the individual at the centre of their experience, recognising the full chasm of what they carry.
Massage as an Integrated Approach
What does an integrated approach look like? One example van der Kolk discusses is massage. Gentle, trauma-informed touch can:
Soften the body
Realign the autonomic and parasympathetic nervous systems
Help those living in a heightened trauma state reconnect with their body
People in a constant state of alertness can even dissociate as a coping mechanism. Massage builds trust, releases endorphins, softens tight and exhausted physical structures, and creates space in both literal and metaphorical ways.
Even the tiniest details matter. How a practitioner sits, the room layout, the starting points for touch. Understanding trauma shapes every aspect of therapy. I could go on.
My Reflection as a Practitioner
As a bodywork therapist, reading this book made me feel witnessed and heard. It recognised the work I, and many other therapeutic practitioners, do.
I have often bristled at the idea that massage therapists aspire to be biomedical practitioners or nurses. I have no desire to be a nurse. I am not a fan of blood or needles. Leave that calling to the humans drawn to it.
But I take my work seriously. I have worked hard not to take poor practice personally or as a slight against my ethics. It is a journey.
I firmly believe you should do your work with heart and dedication. Working with people who hold trauma and pain, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, is a privilege. It is a practice that demands respect and reverence.
A Sunday Morning Meander
This morning, I sat with my coffee in a woozy sense of contemplation. You know that space where you are not quite fully here yet fully present, letting your mind wander.
The cat was curled beside me after a little fussing and soothing. My coffee was strong and meaty. My cat has a wider vocal range than Mariah Carey and is not afraid to use it. I just sat in my pyjamas and went on the most delicious mind wander.
Public domain anatomical image from New York Library
On my meander, I came across van der Kolk’s work and greeted it with reverence. And, as is the way with these little meanderings, I started to think about the title The Body Keeps the Score. I visualised the body as a giant, active score sheet, like a “tick, tick, tick” kind of effort.
Tight shoulders? Tick
Furrowed brow? Tick
Clenched jaw? Tick
And you know, I agree. Every experience leaves its mark on our skin, seeps into our blood and bones, and shapes who we are. Often it is like the air we breathe. We remain blissfully unaware unless something shifts.
But as my mind wandered further, I thought that maybe the body knows the score. Knowledge is scorekeeping. Knowing is embodied understanding. Feeling something, having it lodged in the body, can happen with or without intellectual knowledge.
Knowledge Versus Knowing
Let me try to explain my rambling thoughts a little more clearly. Knowledge is something we acquire, through reading, classes, or study. It is goal-directed and cognitive. I am a kinaesthetic learner. If I do not feel knowledge, it just does not stick very well. It is there, but buffering in the back of a cluttered cupboard that is my brain.
Feeling something, however, makes it real. Not just a wisp of awareness, but seared into your soul, ready to surface with minimal effort. That is knowing. Embodied knowledge becomes knowing.
And you do not even need knowledge to have knowing. Meditation is a perfect example. You do not need to understand the technical functions of the brain or nervous system to feel the benefits. You do not need to know that regulated breathing soothes the fight, flight, or freeze response, or that it realigns disjointed autonomic and parasympathetic systems. You just feel it.
Van der Kolk notes that deep breathwork or physical activity with regulated breathing can realign disconnected autonomic systems. Feeling this effect does not require intellectual understanding.
A Simple Exercise
If you are in a safe space, meaning not driving or operating machinery, take a moment to notice how your body feels right now. No inquiry, just observant curiosity.
Settle into a comfortable posture. Lie down, sit, or stand. Relax your shoulders and torso. Notice your breath, simply observing it at your own pace. Inhale. Exhale. That is all.
Even in a short session, your body changes. Tension may remain, but subtle differences and relief can arise, even for the duration of your breath practice. Over time, this builds embodied knowledge of your body and its responses.
Alchemy
When I studied massage (which is the best part of two decades ago), I started learning anatomy and physiology: soft tissue structures, points of origin and insertion, and how muscles and connective tissue interact.
Did that make me a good massage therapist? Functional, yes. But mastery comes from experience, learning how technical knowledge merges with the subtle cues of the bodies under my hands.
I have learnt to feel soft tissue expressions under duress and respond with encouragement, repair, and healing. That is the alchemy between knowledge and knowing. That is where the magic happens.